Ceramic glass electric cooktops

Our new place has a ceramic glass electric cooktop from Whirlpool. I really don’t understand the popularity of these things. My first choice would be gas, but gas cooktops are hard to find in the Bay Area in newer (non high-end) constructions. Although the traditional coil electric burners are a bit ugly, they are so much easier than these ceramic cooktops.

With the ceramic cooktops, you can’t use copper of (bare) aluminum pots and pans. Your pans must also have completely flat bottoms. If you seriously cook, properly deglazing pans and such, you will round out the bottoms of all your pans, regardless how expensive the cookware. I take good care of my stuff but I really don’t want to replace my pans periodically because the bottoms are slightly curved. You can’t move the pots and pans around on the surface for fear of scratching the surface and you must clean stains up immediately for fear of “permanent staining” as quoted from the user’s manual. I’ve only used the cooktop twice and I already find stains difficult to clean even though I’ve cleaned them immediately with special cooktop wipes (as per the instructions). I thought the idea behind these cooktops was that they are easier to clean? So they are neither easy to clean nor good to cook with. Perhaps if I were to parboil all my food at medium temperature this type of cooktop would be perfect.

The popularity of this type of cooktop is driven by demand. My plea to all of America – stop buying these things. Demand gas cooktops! If you can’t get gas, get the old school coil burner cooktops.

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eGoh (Eric Goh) - Technology entrepreneur, product management professional, fountain of esoteric knowledge. Currently located in Austin, TX but New York, Boston, and San Francisco will always have a place in his heart.